Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

[url=http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/80s/league/player.html?player_id=40489#]Nolan Ryan[/url]

How in the world did Nolan Ryan go 8-16 in 1987???

bad link. I get an image of Ryan's card with stats from one of my leagues. A link to the team would be helpful.

it's a link to ryans card. i think that was on purpose. his 1987 card is the same for everyone. :wink:

You could be right clanman. However a link to the team would tell us more about the circumstances.

I think he's asking how, in real life, could Nolan Ryan have lost 16 games with a 2.74 ERA and 1.14 WHIP, or whatever it was...

The Astros weren't exactly an offensive force in the 80s...

I was following Ryan in 87... Houston did not score much, but Houston was "extra-anemic" when it came to run support for Ryan.. it was something like over a dozen times the Astros scored zero or one runs in games Ryan started... he was hexed from the beginning (I believe the curse started in the Mets-Astros NLCS series year before). Ryan was a cinch for the Cy Young that year if he would have finished even one game OVER .500, but when you're 8-16 it doesn;ty matter, and he weas robbed of a Cy Young award again!

[quote:280d2da068]You could be right clanman. However a link to the team would tell us more about the circumstances. [/quote:280d2da068]

No link necessary. He's talking about real life, pal... the ultimate mystery card.

In 1987... Ryan averaged 11.48 K's per 9 innings... 6.55 hits per 9 innings, had 270 K's, and gave up only 14 HR's in 211 IP

(recall, 1987 was the year of sudden HR explosion, as HR's hugely increased vs. prior levels, with Dawson, Eric Davis, McGwire, Jack Clark just a few of the guys to have monster HR years.

[url=http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/library/columns/gs_040601.htm]See full article...[/url] Excerpt below (14 runs support in 16 losses!!!):

In his 16 losses, he pitched 88 innings and got only 14 runs of support while in the game. Six times the Astros scored no runs for him, and eight times they scored only one run while he was pitching.

Five times in 1987, Ryan left the game with a lead, only to see the bullpen blow the victory for him. After he left games, his teammates scored only 13 runs, while the bullpen allowed 41.

FYI...

Phillies reliever Sterve Bedrosian was given the Cy Young Award in 1987, with 40 saves, a 2.88 ERA and a 5-3 record (11 HR's in 83 IP)[/url]

Sorry for the confusion there, gentlemen! :o

That was my purpose for the thread, I was amazed to look through his cards, see the 1987 one, and see his record. I remember it when it happened, but I wasn't really following Houston so I didn't watch his pain firsthand.

Amazing that with those stats and that card a guy could have such hard luck. This year in Boston we've got a poor man's version (okay discontinued, some assembly required, open box, damaged goods version) of that with Wakefield. 3 runs allowed a game and he can't buy a win.

Bill James wrote aboyt what he called "the index of self destructive acts," (which may or may not apply to Nolan's 8-16 year, but bear with me). He said that some pitchers had a tendency to do more things to hurt themselves (walks being one thing), and that Nolan, for all his greatness, suffered from a complete inability to give anything to ANY batters. Whether he faced Mario Mendoza or George Brett, Nolan tried to make perfect pitch after perfect pitch, when, in some cases perhaps, he'd-a been better off to've given in a little, grooved a fastball to a lowly hitter, and maybe let his defense help him. The exact opposite of this philosophy is best represented by Fergie Jenkins and Catfish Hunter, who, as James put it, few walks and had a firm commitment to strike one. They'd give up a few bombs every now and then, but they didn't do a whole lot to hurt themselves. Accdording to James, Quiz had the lowest index of SDA's, while Hershiser actually ranked kinda high.

(I think all this is fr. James' historical baseball abstract)